Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/170

Rh This clearly worded ruling states the attitude of courts in Oregon in general to this day.

The court ruled that a newspaper cannot copy without liability, libelous matter from another paper, but such fact may, when properly pleaded, tend to show want of malice and mitigate damages. The damages, it was held, are not necessarily affected by a failure to make good a plea of justification. It will depend upon motive and good faith.

This, incidentally, is the way the editor involved worked out a bit of defamation when he set his hand to it:

"He . . . has already acquired the reputation of being a loathsome, venomous thing, without shame; a man without a spark of manhood, a betrayer of his party, a citizen whose word is not worth a straw; a vile and cowardly slanderer; an infamous scoundrel and a perjured villain . . . (name) had called publicly you, to your face, a perjurer and a thief. . . Deny this if you dare. We could recount many more of your ways that are dark, (name). But we think the above will suffice for the present."

One would think it might!

Commenting on the action of the association, the Bee (October 15, 1878) denied that J. G. Chapman, while a staff member, had any authority to represent the Bee at the meeting and said that "had he consulted this office he would have acted differently." It went on to declare for "a law to severely punish the libeler" and "to require a moral character of every leading editor in the state." In the issue of the 20th the Bee pointed to a bitter personal warfare in the editorial columns between Noltner of the Standard and Scott of the Oregonian, who were declared to be "using the most venomous, spiteful, and ill-natured language at their command, in which 'perjury' and 'penitentiary' mingle constantly." The Bee, further, noted the active part played by Mart V. Brown, late state printer, in the convention and all its actions.

The time was, indeed, one of loose morality in public affairs. A legislative committee appointed to investigate the conduct of state offices found, among other things, outrageous overcharging of the state for printing done by the recent state printer. The way in which the recent state printer, active in the new association—its president, in fact—had operated, is described in an editorial in the Oregonian which said:

When a state printer expands each page of matter over four pages and prints each one of those pages on paper which is counted as four reams for one, and charges for com position, press work, etc., on this fraudulent basis, the bill